Fabricated wood shaft



Reissued Apr.- 28, 1925.

UNITED STATES Re. 16,058 PATENT OFFICE.

HARRY IVORY JORDAN, OF AUBURN, MAINE, ASSIGNOR TO LAMINO MANUFACTURING COMPANY, A CORPORATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

FABRICATED WOOD SHAFT.

Original No. 1,457,528, dated June 5, 1923, Serial No. 517,547, led November 25, 1921.

reissue filed January 25,

To (1U 'zr/om it may concern:

lie it known that I, HARRY I. JORDAN, a citizen of the United States, residing at Auburn, in the county of Androscoggin and 5 State of Maine, have invented certain new and useful improvements in a novel fabricated wood shaft of great general utility and adapted Jfor-many purposes-where suitable natural growths are dilicu-lt to obtain,

such as for golf-club shafts, of which the following is a specification.

My present invention in the specific e1nbodiment lselected as illustrative of the broader invention is designed as an iinprovenient on my application Serial No. 496,343, filed August 29, 1921, covering such a shaft made up of what is technically known as ply-wood with the plane of the layers at right angles tothe direction of swing of the club.

It is well known that hickory suitable for shafts for drivers and other golf clubs has become very scarce and expensive.

The object of my present invention is to produce a fabricated wood which may be cheaply manufactured and'which will approach in quality, if not excel, the hickory now so much sought for such shafts.

Fabricated wood shafts have been made with a central layer arranged at Vright angles to the swing of the club with auxiliary sections on either side of said central layer of triangular and other forms of crosssection.

5 This so-called ply-wood of 'which my original shaft was formed was made up of a plurality of layers of veneer pressed together and glued with the grain of alternate plies or layers disposed at right anglesto each other.

In building up a shaft of this character, I found from experience that those layers in which the grain of the shaft was at right angles to thc length of the' shaft while they had a tendency to prevent the warping-of the shaft and to resist torsion ltended also "o diminish the strength and the resiliency' if the shaft.

According to my present invention, in. stead of alternately crossingthe direction ef the grain in the various layers, I have iemnd that if the plies are pressed together with the rain in all of them extending longitudinal y in the same general direction, I

Application for 1924. Serial No. 688,625.

obtain a shaft which is stronger than the average solid shaft and has greaterjre'siliency at that portion of the shaft which is adjacent to the head.

It is this resiliency at this articular portion ofthe shaft which hol s the head in contact with the ball while the latter is springing away from the face of the club, and the greater this resiliency, the greater the impulse which will be given tothe ball in addition to the velocity of the club due to its swing.

I have found that with a shaft constructed as I have described, namely, with the grain of all the layers extending longi tudinally in the same general direction, I am able to vary the quality of the shaft by turning it into various positions in the socket of the head and also. by varying the thickness of the several laye-rs.

Thus, when the plies are in the same plane as the swing of the club, the shaft is stiffer than when they are at right angles with the plane of the swing. When the la ers are at right angles to the swing of the s ft the latter is in its most ilexible position. In various positions between these two, different degrees -of stiffness and'diierent resistances to torsion may be brought out in my improved shaft.

By running the grainof all layers in the `same general longitudinal direction, the grain of each layer-may be made to cross at' a greater' or less angle the grain of adjacent layers and in that manner the grain will be securely knit together or interwoven so that the shaft thus built up will have a. great degree of toughness as compared with a solid wooden shaft of bestA quality hickory, the material recognized as most suitable for golf clubs at the present time.

My shaft may be made up of veneer cut from various kinds of logs, preferably from hickory, so that when fabricated as described, it will be equal to or better than' hickory of the finest grade and far less. eX- pensive to manufacture;

have

I have illustrated 1n invention by means of the accompanyin rawin in which,

Fig. l is a plan o the sha Fig. 2 is a cross section on the line 1-1, Fig. 1, and l Fig. 3 is a view of a. slab in accordance with my invention with .the layers successively eut away to show the intcrweaving of the grain.

Referring to the drawing, the shaft is huilt up of plies or layers of veneer 2 cut from the Surface of the log by a suitable veneer lathe, the trips beinev stuck together and compressed under heavy pressure The result is a homogeneous wood body having very great strength and resiliency whie-hcan be builtat a price 'far less than the cost of hickory. In Such a wood body the fibres G of the several layers 2 while all generally longitudinal arc relatively knit o1' interwoven as illustrated in Fig; 3. In this ligure the veneer s rips 21, 2252, 2*, are shown as cut away slightly to indicate this gra-in.

Such a material is found to have very gre-at strength, and is adapted to a golf shaft as the available resiliency and the uniformity of the grain makes for great novelty in the article itself.

The material is sawed or turned and worked down tothe forni of a. shaft exactly like any other Wooden shaft.

What I thereforeclaim and desire to secure by .Letters ,Patent is:-

l. A shaft for golf clubs substantially the entire body of which is :nadie up of a plurality of relatively thin layers of wood vene-er cemented and compressed together with the grain of the Wood in all the layers extending gene-rally longitudinally of the shaft.

2. A shaft lfor golf clubs conlprisilngr a plurality of relatively thin layersof ivood disposed laterally thereof` and cemented face to face. the grain of theI wood of'each layer extending generally longitudinally of the shaft but at slight angles to eac-h other.

HARRY IVORY JORDAN.

Titnessesz MARIAN F Trueba ELSIE F. DYER. 

